"Yes, he is with the tzin, but does not explain. It is enough to know, O Teochma, that they are not prisoners. Now, indeed, may we rejoice!" returned the now joyful prince.
The communication was the one sent by the old preceptor, to which allusion was made in the last chapter.
The good news quickly spread, and the cloud of sorrow which had hung like a pall over the friends of the tzin and the old tutor was lifted, and general rejoicing succeeded.
Hualcoyotl immediately sent a summons to Cacami, who was at his home in the country, to come to him at once. The young warrior came promptly, in obedience to the summons, and was not less joyful than the prince at the surprising intelligence. He was ordered to take a sufficient number of men and go to the little town for the purpose of bringing the wounded tzin and his aged companion to the city. The duty, under the circumstances, was a most agreeable one to Cacami, who stood not upon the order of his going, but set off at once to perform it.
From a house of sorrow and mourning the palace was changed to one of joy and gladness by the joyful news. Its halls and corridors rang with the music of happy voices, impressing the royal household as the inhabitant of the winter frozen north is impressed by the glad notes of spring, heard in the songs of the returning forest minstrels, after a long and dreary season of storm and cold—incomparable waking of ecstatic emotions.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
In order that the reader may be made acquainted with the circumstances in Mitla's case, which led to her appearance, so opportunely for Euetzin, in the camp of Maxtla's defeated army, it will be necessary for us to go back to the holding of the tournament at Tlacopan, and notice, briefly, a few of the incidents connected with her movements.
When Ix's mountain guard came to that city to join the army, they did so as individuals, and were accompanied by a number of their people, consisting mostly of women and men servants, who came, especially, to witness the tourney. Mitla was of the party, coming at the request of Euetzin to take part in the archers' contest, and whose skill, it will be remembered, proved such an interesting feature of the occasion.
The real object for which the tournament was gotten up had not become known beyond the circle of close-mouthed projectors of the movement against Maxtla, and Mitla, as one of the public, was therefore ignorant of what was to follow. She was to have returned to her home at the conclusion of the tourney, with her party, but when the excitement, which ensued upon the heels of it because of the unavoidable publicity of the movement, became absorbingly intense, and she learned the true situation of affairs, she determined on pursuing a different course. Her love for the tzin, which had so quickly become an irresistible, absorbing passion, and which had given added fervency by the grandeur of the scene in which he was a conspicuous figure, and she an object of special attention and admiration—together with a longing desire to be near him, which had suddenly taken possession of her—outweighed all other considerations, and she resolved on following him to the field. How to accomplish this, without her presence in the army becoming known to him, was a matter of no little moment—especially to her, an inexperienced mountain girl. However, love knows no barriers too great to be surmounted, and hers was not an exception. She settled the question by procuring the necessary apparel with which to change her appearance to that of a boy, which she carried away with her when she left the city—presumably to return to her home.